Hacker breaches Ethereum-based analogue of Ordinals

The Ethscriptions protocol for issuing digital artifacts on Ethereum, modeled after Ordinals on the Bitcoin network, came under a hacker attack.

According to project lead Tom Leman, the protocol itself and related applications were not affected. However, the attacker managed to withdraw 202 assets from 123 addresses stored in Ethscriptions.

The exact amount stolen is unknown, but according to data from NFT marketplace OpenSea, previously some inscriptions were sold for 5 ETH (~$9,600 at the time of the deal).

Leman took responsibility for the breach. He said that the attacker’s actions could be traced to a smart contract he had created. He explained that a flaw in the code allowed the hacker to withdraw artifacts that did not belong to him.

“The aim of the marketplace was to show others how to create marketplaces and help build the ecosystem. Unfortunately, we have fallen flat on our faces in this direction,” added Leman.

The head of the marketplace noted the significant loss of the rare Ethscription #56.

Leman said the Ethscriptions marketplace would be relaunched after the necessary changes.

The project lead, who was a co-founder and former CEO of the online music encyclopedia Genius, launched the protocol on July 19. According to him, the launch went smoothly — in less than 18 hours nearly 30,000 Ethscriptions were created, including a copy of the popular NFT collection CryptoPunks.

By the end of June, trading volume on the platform exceeded $1 million. According to the Dune dashboard, users have minted about 474,000 artifacts to date.

In May, the developers of Ordinals Market and Bitcoin Miladys introduced the BRC-721E standard, which enables migration of Ethereum NFTs to ERC-721 within the Bitcoin-based protocol.